BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//InvisionCommunity Events 5.0.18//EN METHOD:PUBLISH CALSCALE:GREGORIAN REFRESH-INTERVAL:PT15M X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT15M X-WR-CALNAME:RMCommunityCalendar NAME:RMCommunityCalendar BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London TZURL:https://tzurl.org/zoneinfo/Europe/London X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/London BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20210328T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=-1SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20211031T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=-1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:The Black Screenwriter Cometh 07/03/2021 DTSTAMP:20250526T182344Z SEQUENCE:0 UID:304-7-c3fe8195a3dde498d013e477e2142422@aalbc.com ORGANIZER;CN="richardmurray":noreply@aalbc.com DESCRIPTION:\n The Black Screenwriter Cometh 07/03/2021\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n In my experience\, less than ten percent of the black writers I have talked to throughout my lifetime have read or written a screenplay. The question is why? \n\n I do not know exactly\, I can not give a roadm ap but I have ideas. \n\n I will go back... when I was a kid\, multiple t imes my parents took me to see plays. August Wilson\, Black theaters aroun d harlem. They never took me to see a white play\, defined as a play writt en by a white person. Sequentially\, I saw black art not merely from one p erspective. This parallels my constant rant on black fantasy\, which sums up to \, I was raised with black fantasy so I didn't see King Arthur or Be owulf or disney princesses or saturday morning cartoons as places that nee ded black fantasy cause I had it in the books in my home. \n\n I have the century cycle as part of my book collection. Why did I mention that? Many black people who say they love august wilson don't have his stageplays. A ugust Wilson wrote the plays\, in the same way Shakespeare wrote his and y es as a kid I thought of August wilson whenever we read shakespeare in cla ss. My parents have two trains running and some others as singles\, which i read during those early years. I have twilight zone scripts\, which are\ ,for me\, invaluable in seeing technique for writing scripts/screenplays.  \n\n Now my personal life means nothing to answer the initial question.  \n\n I restate\, why do less than ten percent of the black writers I tal ked to throughout my life\, offline or online\, not have read or written a screenplay? \n\n I know black writers offline who won awards for their w ork\, made revenue from their work. I have made connections with black wri ters online who have varying levels of financial return or awards to their quality. \n\n I myself prefer writing poetry more than anything else. \ n\n But\, I have written screenplays\, read them. \n\n Why have so few of my peers? \n\n While I ranted/provided background composing this I see t wo points that are undeniable. \n\n 1.Screenplays are not finished produc ts and black people in the arts in the USA\, don't like that. Ownership is a big cultural idea in the black community in the USA. It stems from cent uries of enslavement and nearly to centuries of abuse after enslavement. w hen an artwork is not finished\, it is not owned. And no screenplay is eve r finished\, it is merely the template\, no matter how elegant\, for the v ideo recorded interpretation by humans\, what is commonly called acting.\n \n 2.Screenplays structure is a thin lattice over anything goes sections. Meaning\, outside some basics\, the monolog or multilogs \, the definition of scenes are open in their definition for screenplays. Education for bla ck people in the USA after the war between the states\, ending around ten years\,  was wholly funded by whites and mostly trade or skill based in d efinition. Why ? Cause white religious organizations funded the schools an d wanted the bible to be the sole literary device for the black community. On the other side \, in the same time period you had the reading schools were all age groups were allowed to learn to read. But\, these schools wer e not interested in forming or creating a alphabet or literature for black people's various dialects of english. These schools were purposed to teac h english as accepted by  the white churches that funded most of them\, w ho desired the british english. Remember\, during that time most white peo ple were still in a literary love affair with britain. Sequentially in the USA\, the black communities first educated group\, comprehend most black people did not go to school of any kind\, had a very rigid sense of litera ture or writing. This was not \, let the gullah/geehce/creole/delta commun ities create a literature to be the foundation for the future. This was\, learn queen's english\, read the bible.  Rigidity was deeply set in how l iterature was learned in the black community. Tuskeegee or Howard are prob ably the most well known black colleges and the former was a trade school and the latter a seminary. NEither was a place where black literature or l iterature in itself was open to philosophical debate. Thus in modernity\, the legacies of those educational cultures exist in the black community. W hen you hear a black say\, as I have\, that their parents didn't want them to be musicians or artists\, or their parents wanted them to have a bette r work ethic. That philosophy to learning comes from the trade school\, th e religious school. Which is the founding place for all black fraternitiei s or sororities. What does this have to do with the structure of a screenp lay. LEarning for black people in the past 160 years\, circa\, is constrai ned. With poetry\, whose forms all have rules\, or prose\, that has accept ed structures\, it is easy for the black educated populace to adhere to th ose rules. But\, with a screenplay\, you are not in error if you don't do it like another\, and that simple truth\, is uncomfortable for many black writers\, who like to be right. If you are going to play the game\, you ha ve to know its rules and abide by them\, but what happens when the rules a re open for interpretation. Can you imagine\, can you accept that? \n\n\n \n from\n\n\n\n Richard Murray\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n Original Post\n\n\n\n ht tps://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=1565&\;type=statu s\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n  \n\n DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20210703 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR